Huntsville schools say call from NSA led to monitoring students online

[jakeXT]

Source: AL

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - A secret program to monitor students' online activities began quietly in Huntsville schools, following a phone call from the NSA, school officials say.

Huntsville schools Superintendent Casey Wardynski says the system began monitoring social media sites 18 months ago, after the National Security Agency tipped the school district to a student making violent threats on Facebook.

The NSA, a U.S. agency responsible for foreign intelligence, this week said it has no record of a call to Huntsville and does not make calls to school systems.

....

About a year and half ago, Wardynski said, the NSA called Huntsville and reported a high school student had threatened on Facebook to injure a teacher.




Read more: http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2014/09/after_warning_from_nsa_huntsvi.html

[tomm2thumbs]

1. nothing to see here, move along.... (flicking away gnats)

Please return to your enjoyable reality TV programming and snacks. There is nothing more to see here.

[Soylent Brice]

7. yup.

[OnyxCollie]

2. K&R. nt

[Fred Sanders]

3. Since folks flocked to mobile social media and willingly signed away their privacy on the dotted

who is really most to blame?

Edit: Meant to post to OP. Sorry.

[uhnope]

4. Maybe the caller said he was "an ese", not "NSA"

Hey, cholo, this is an ese and some vato on FB is causing problemos

[Dr. Xavier]

5. Give them an inch

and they'll take a mile. So it begins...

[BrotherIvan]

6. Aren't they supposed to only be spying on foreign correspondence?

This seems pretty much like spying on citizens. Didn't the President say they were specifically NOT doing that?

[24601]

8. So let me get this straight...NSA calls a school about a classified operation. And we know this

is true because....

NSA always calls school personnel that don't have a security clearance and discloses classified information...

NSA called the school, because they tend not to have secure systems....

No one at the school can recall precisely who at NSA called with this information....

Or perhaps a middle school student pranked the school - sounds more likely to me.

Try this...DU, this is the federal government. One or more of your posters has been saying things that could be interpreted as a threat....would you please monitor everybody? Of course you can't have my name & number, you might give it to the terrorists

ROTFLMAO!

[sybylla]

14. OR

Some paranoid fuckwit administrator needed an excuse to spy on everyone at the school.

[Android3.14]

9. Sounds like the admin is covering its ass

Call from the NSA because a student threatens a teacher? Pull the other one. They need to round up those administrators and send them to an alternative school.

[Sunlei]

10. looks like 'consultant Chris McRae" worked his way into a nice paycheck looking at kids online pics

[JoeyT]

11. I don't really trust either side involved in this one.

If y'all remember the America's Army brainwashing/recruiting tool thinly disguised as a video game that came out a while back, Wardynski is the asshole behind it.

[jakeXT]

12. Interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Army

[bigworld]

13. I'm sure the NSA has bigger problems to worry about

Either a student called and pranked the administration, or the administrators just made it all up to CYA.